


Feel Like You Felt

by triggerswaggiehavoc



Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Drama & Romance, Emotional Baggage, First Love, M/M, Miscommunication, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-26
Updated: 2020-08-26
Packaged: 2021-03-06 23:48:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,490
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26127505
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/triggerswaggiehavoc/pseuds/triggerswaggiehavoc
Summary: High school was forever ago, and Minghao's over it already. It would be nice if he could convince his friends of that, at least. Even nicer if he could convince himself.
Relationships: Xu Ming Hao | The8/Yoon Jeonghan
Comments: 21
Kudos: 96





	Feel Like You Felt

There’s a crack in the vinyl of the booth seat. Minghao can feel a thin layer of fabric beneath it, protecting the cushion inside from his restless fingertips. He forces his hands back up to fold together in his lap, knuckles brushing the underside of the table. His neck is too tight around his throat to make him feel like talking. The turtleneck was a bad idea.

“So,” the girl across from him drones—Ellie is her name, if he’s remembering right—and she picks up her chopsticks only to place them back down for the sixth time since Minghao’s started counting, “what about you?”

Minghao blinks. “What about me?”

“Your first love,” she clarifies. Her eyes are soft and round and pretty, and Minghao can already feel himself forgetting them. After a few seconds, they glare. “I told you about mine, so it’s only fair.”

“First love, huh?” Minghao blows a breath out through his nose. How trite. What an awful thing to talk about on a first date. Or a last date, which this is starting to look like it’ll be as well. Fourth time this month. This time for sure, Minghao is going to tell Mingyu to stop setting him up with people. Clearly it’s not working. “I don’t really have one.”

“Is that right?” Her tone is harsh now. Maybe she can tell he’s lying. If that’s the case, all the more reason Minghao doesn’t want to talk about it. “You really just think love is stupid or something, don’t you?”

“Something like that.” Minghao makes an attempt at a smile, but she doesn’t bother to return it. Neither would he, he reckons. He watches her eyes dart around the dining room behind him, hand raise to signal the waiter.

Without his noticing, Minghao’s hand finds its way back to the split in the upholstery, tries worming its way through the mesh again. It’s thin, he can tell, but surprisingly sturdy. Right after the flagged-down waiter sets their bill on the table, one of his fingers manages to pop through. When he fishes it back out, there’s a small piece of cushion stuck under the end of his nail. It doesn’t come out until he makes it back home.

That summer, Minghao was fifteen, which meant that Jeonghan was seventeen. It rained more than usual for the month of June, but July was sweltering and achingly dry to make up for it. And Jeonghan’s neighbors had a pool. He’d seen them packing bags into the car the day before, a sure shot they’d be gone for at least half the week, maybe more. It was a beautiful pool, and there was a spot in the fence where a couple of the slats would move just enough that someone could sneak through.

“We have to be quiet,” Jeonghan whispered, popping the screen back into place on his bedroom window and dusting his hands off on his shorts. “If my mom hears any noise, she’ll probably call the cops. And then the neighbors.” His eyes were alive with the glimmer of the almost-full moon. Minghao could have fallen into them.

The crickets were loud that night, more than a few cicadas singing to the clear night sky, but Minghao heard every sound like a gunshot. Grass rustling with each footstep, fence boards creaking past each other, bits of gravel skidding underfoot, Jeonghan’s breath inches from his ear. They tiptoed through the neighbors’ yard with their breath held, Jeonghan’s hands clutching tight to Minghao’s shoulders the whole time.

“Maybe we shouldn’t do this,” Minghao said. Jeonghan laughed, quiet below the rush of the air around them, and spun Minghao around so quick to face him that a spray of gravel went flying into the pool. The moon preserved so perfectly on its surface dissolved in a fit of ripples.

“It’s too late for that, Minghao,” Jeonghan whispered, hot on Minghao’s cheeks. “We’re already here.”

He walked on soft steps to the edge of the pool and leaned down to dip his hand under the water. For a long time, he sat still there, staring down forever, like there was some creature hiding in the depths. Minghao wanted to go look, too, but he was scared breathless of making another sound. After a lifetime, Jeonghan sighed.

“What?” Minghao whispered. He wondered if Jeonghan could even hear him, but then again, Jeonghan’s eyes were already on him, overflowing with light.

“I just realized,” Jeonghan said, “I forgot my swim trunks.”

“What?” The whole idea, the whole reason Minghao came to spend the night, was so they could come to this pool, and Jeonghan forgot to put on his swim trunks before they snuck out his window. Now that Minghao was thinking about it, he didn’t have his either. Were they even at Jeonghan’s or had he left them at home? He couldn’t remember with the moon staring at him like that. “What are we gonna do? Go back?”

“No way,” Jeonghan said. “My parents are totally gonna hear us. We can’t go back until they’re asleep.”

“What, then?” Minghao crept a few feet forward, but stopped himself. Every step was a landmine. “Just sit here for two hours?”

“Of course not. We’re swimming.” With a deliberate sort of slowness, Jeonghan slid his arms inside his shirt and pushed it up over his head, then pulled his shorts down to his ankles, underwear and all.

“Are you kidding me?” Minghao choked three times trying to say it. His chest was yelling so much louder than his throat could manage.

“There’s no other way,” Jeonghan said. “We can’t go back with our clothes soaking wet.” He jerked his chin at Minghao. “Hurry up, or I’m gonna swim circles in there without you.”

There was a manic carefulness to the way Jeonghan folded his clothes up and laid them on the ground, slow but every inch of him buzzing with a fevered energy. Minghao was dizzy, nearly too much to take his own clothes off, but he managed it in gradual steps, eyes glued to the ground while he undressed.

Growing up, he’d seen Jeonghan without clothes on plenty of times, but it had been a while, and Jeonghan looked so different at 17 than he had at 9. There was something daunting, too, about the way moonlight dripped down his shoulders, something silver and forbidden, something so horrifyingly enchanting that he felt like he was drowning before he could even get his feet wet. By the time he broke his gaze away from the mess he’d folded his clothes into, Jeonghan had already slipped into the water, stirring up cautious ripples of pearl-white sheen in a halo all around him. Mischief lined every corner of his face. Minghao could see him like it was noon.

A chill swallowed him as he slid into the pool, slow as he could manage to avoid making a splash. His ankles were numb by the time he’d made his way fully into the water. Above water, his head and shoulders were still engulfed in the unrelenting evening heat. The two confused poles of his own body made him feel like he was floating somewhere in the middle of space. Jeonghan’s eyes kept him close to the ground.

“It’s freezing,” Minghao said, gasping. Tiny waves crashed into his shoulders when Jeonghan waded toward him.

“It’ll warm up,” Jeonghan said, “in no time.”

Underwater, his hands reached out to grasp at Minghao’s elbows, fingertips lingering. His hands were just as cold as the water, but they stuck to Minghao’s skin like a burn. For minutes, they stood there in the pool, silent breaths rousing wavelets on the surface. Minghao wanted Jeonghan to say something so he wouldn’t have to, but all he did was stare, so all Minghao did was stare back. In the grass on the other side of the yard, a cricket began to chirp. Something in Jeonghan’s smile changed, but Minghao couldn’t put a name on what. The moon grew so much brighter.

“See?” Jeonghan tugged Minghao an inch or two closer. His back stung like it was pressed flat against a wall, lungs reached for air. “It’s not so cold anymore.” It wasn’t, maybe. A shiver ran through Minghao anyway, all the way down to his toes.

It’s obvious that Mingyu isn’t interested in hearing what Minghao’s saying. That might be fair. He still doesn’t have to look so distinctly pissed off about it. All the while Minghao speaks, Mingyu sits there toying with his straw. One word and he’s pulled it out of the lid, the next and he’s shoved it right back in, another and he’s stirring the ice around. He loves to make noise when he’s annoyed. A habit Minghao has never cared for.

“I’m just saying,” Minghao says, blocking out the horrible plastic scraping sounds coming from inside Mingyu’s cup, “that maybe you should just give up on trying to get me with all these boring hot people you keep finding.”

“Boring?” Mingyu would have spit if he were drinking. Unfortunately, he finished his iced coffee half an hour ago. “Dude, it’s not that they’re boring. You’re the problem.”

“Are you kidding me?” Minghao sputters. “I am not the problem.”

“Oh, sorry, did I strike a nerve? Did I hit a sore spot?” He gives up fiddling with the cup to drum his fingers on the tabletop, nails making a sound like spotty rain on a window pane. Annoying. “It’s not everybody else’s fault that you can’t get over a relationship you never even had.”

A block of stale air lodges itself in the front of Minghao’s throat, and he works up a sweat trying to choke it back down. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You know what I’m talking about,” Mingyu says. Beneath his palm, he crushes the cup as flat as it will go with the ice still inside. The noise is so much more grating. “Who I’m talking about, I mean.”

With one hand, Mingyu lifts the cup and tosses it toward the trash bin in the kitchen. For a moment, it seems like it’ll go in, but when it reaches the can, all it does is pelt the edge and send the whole thing tumbling over. A cluster of crumbled snack wrappers spills out onto the floor, and beside them, the crushed up cup. Drops of water squeeze out slowly between the cracks in the plastic, drip down to the hardwood. Mingyu sighs and stands to clean it up.

Between July and November, something about Jeonghan started to seem different. He turned eighteen in October, but it wasn’t just that he snapped instantly into a new person on his birthday. Rather, it was like he was a pot of water set on the burner, rapidly approaching a boil.

“Come to the football game this Friday,” Jeonghan said to him the Monday morning before his birthday. He was breathing like he’d been running around. Lately, he’d sure seemed that way, like he was always racing against something, never sitting still. Minghao hoped he was winning.

“Football?” Minghao asked. “Why?”

“C’mon,” Jeonghan said, his word of choice when he didn’t want to explain himself, “it’ll be fun.”

‘Fun’ probably wasn’t the word Minghao would have used. It rained most of the day, right up until the game was just about to start, so the bleachers were all too wet to sit on, and he didn’t really have the energy to stand through it. He didn’t know most of Jeonghan’s friends, being that they were all other seniors, and he also didn’t know much about football. Neither did Jeonghan, he was pretty sure, but there they were regardless. Minghao stood with his arms crossed for two hours.

Jeonghan, though, seemed to be having an excellent time. Minghao was sure he didn’t know the rules of football, but he was cheering and hollering right along with his other friends, flailing his arms around under the greenish lights shining over them. He felt far away, like Minghao was on the other side of the field, watching through a veil of uniformed bodies. It was too cold. When Jeonghan glanced his way, Minghao fixed his eyes back on the field and gripped the insides of his elbows tighter.

It was a narrow win. Not that Minghao had really been paying attention. To celebrate, they went to Waffle House afterward. Minghao was already in the mood to go home, but Jeonghan was his ride, so he crammed himself into the corner of the booth seat at Waffle House, Jeonghan pressed close beside him, one more guy hanging off the end. Three other guys huddled together on the opposite side, and they were all too loud, breathing up all the air before Minghao had a chance to get his lungs on it.

“Man, I still can’t believe we won,” one of the guys said, slinging a forkful of hash browns around dangerously. They didn’t slide off, but Minghao was sure they were about to. “I thought that play in the first quarter was gonna screw us for good.”

“It should have,” the guy next to him said. “Seriously.”

Minghao didn’t know any of their names. He pushed a small pile of scrambled eggs left and right on his plate with his fork. The color of them was off somehow. He hadn’t eaten all afternoon, but a few bites of waffle had him full enough already. An elbow jabbing into his side jolted him hard enough to make him feel like puking.

“This has been really fun,” Jeonghan said, not looking at him, but at the others, “but my stomach hurts, so I think I’m gonna head home.” He turned then to look at Minghao, and his eyes were so big and so close, so brown and so molten. “You ready to go?” he asked, not really a whisper but definitely not anything else, voice a sprinkling of sugar under the over-loud sound of the building’s ambient buzz.

“Yeah,” Minghao said. “I’m ready.”

Jeonghan smiled something soft. “Alright.”

“Boo,” the trio across the table jeered in perfect harmony. One of them chucked a small piece of sausage, but Jeonghan dodged it. After clearing his shoulder, it rolled quietly into the seat of the booth behind them. “You’re so un-fun, dude. You finally come out to a game, and now you’re bailing early.”

“Sorry, boys,” Jeonghan said, “nature calls.” He pulled Minghao along by the elbow, thumb pressing hard into the inside. “And Minghao has a curfew, anyway.” Which was true, but Minghao had checked his phone not long ago, and it wasn’t for another hour and some change. Still, they paid their bills at the desk and stepped out into the evening amid a choir of jeers from Jeonghan’s other friends.

The air was much colder than it had been before they set foot inside, still sick with the lingering touch of rain. Jeonghan’s car was too loud when the engine revved to life, too quiet when the radio fizzled on to play the nighttime hits. For the first few minutes of the drive, he didn’t say anything. Silent, Minghao kept his eyes on the trees going by outside the window, on the sidewalks and the street signs. He squinted.

“My house isn’t this way,” he said.

“Correct.” Jeonghan’s voice always gave away when he was smiling.

“Where are we going?”

“You’ll see.”

“But your stomach—”

“Feels fine.” Jeonghan took his eyes off the road for one long second to meet them up with Minghao’s, lips a small curve. “I know you wanted to leave.” Minghao had suspected as much, but Jeonghan saying it still made him warm, too warm, heat bubbling up from the grooves in his ribs. “Besides, I wanted to take you somewhere.”

“Where?”

“I said you’ll see.”

He turned the radio up just enough to cover up the sound of the tires rolling along the asphalt, and Minghao kept watching, through the windshield this time, glow of the headlights washing up all kinds of shapes in the dark stretching out in front of them. Minghao couldn’t drive yet, and he certainly hadn’t ever been with his parents to whatever part of town Jeonghan was taking them to. It hardly seemed like part of town at all. The longer they drove, the fewer the buildings, the thicker the tree line.

After they passed a little gas station with a pathetically flickering sign, Jeonghan took a right so sharp the car almost stalled halfway through. They rattled their way up a road that must have been a mixture of gravel and lug nuts, then pulled to a shaky stop. Jeonghan turned off the headlights and cut the engine.

“Check it out,” he said, hands outstretched as if to reach right through the glass. He drummed his fingers on the dashboard. Minghao squinted.

“What am I checking out, exactly?”

Jeonghan sighed. “It’s a little river. See?” He pointed toward a shred of light in the distance, and the silhouette started to build itself before Minghao’s eyes. Under the dark clouds, it was hard to make out, but it stretched by in front of them, flowing out of one clump of trees and into another, baring only a short strip to its audience of two. “Isn’t it nice?”

“I mean… I guess.”

“I found it when I was just driving around,” Jeonghan said, drawing his arms in, tucking his hands into his sides. He blew a breath up at his hair. “It would look better if the moon was out.”

They sat a while without talking, just staring out the window, waiting for something unnamed. The longer he looked, the more Minghao could see of the curve of the river, the rocks lining its shore. Gradually, chill began to creep in, starting at the floor in working its way up through the seat, grabbing Minghao by the legs and clawing toward his still-molten chest. He coughed once, and Jeonghan turned to look at him.

“Why did we come here?”

Jeonghan held his breath a second, then let it out slowly, like a tire deflating. “I just wanted you to see it,” he said, low. “And today, with the game…” He sighed again, held his mouth in a tight line, turned back to look through the window. “Do you ever feel like you’re, like, outgrowing?”

Minghao waited a second. “Outgrowing what?”

“I don’t know.” Jeonghan’s hands ran through his hair. “Everything.” He looked up at the roof of the car then, like he could see straight through it, past the clouds, all the way to the stars. Even the way he was breathing was unusually heavy. “I thought it would be fun to go to the game today. Y’know, kinda like, cramming in as much as possible before I can’t anymore?” He shook his head, eyes still trained straight up. “I don’t wanna miss my chance to do anything fun.”

“You seemed like you were having fun, though,” Minghao said. “To me.”

“Well, I was, mostly. I don’t know.” Then he was looking at Minghao again, leaning partway across the console. “I just feel like I’m starting to get too big, or something.”

“Too big?”

“To be here anymore,” Jeonghan clarified. “Like, when I’m driving around town. It all feels so small.” He leaned and leaned and leaned, and without realizing, Minghao leaned with him, until they nearly met in the middle, noses just an inch apart.

“So what are you gonna do?” Minghao whispered.

“I don’t know,” Jeonghan murmured back. His breath tickled Minghao’s lips like a midnight breeze. His shoulder twitched. “I found this river, and it made things feel a little bigger, so I wanted you to see it. I didn’t tell anybody else.”

Outside the car, way up in the sky, the clouds tore themselves asunder to reveal a swatch of navy sky, pale chunk of moon buried in its midst. Its silver light danced along the edge of the water, painted the outline of the river in all its fine detail. On the other side were more trees, clusters of overgrown weeds, a few patches where gravel and dirt overran the grass.

Gray clouds drifted further apart over the surface of the water, and Jeonghan drifted nearer. The moon outside was blinding after being so hidden. Minghao squinted his eyes shut against it, and when he opened them again, Jeonghan was far away, turning the key in the ignition. The radio was still too quiet, tickling the red backs of Minghao’s ears the whole ride home.

The atmosphere in the apartment is off from the second Minghao steps in the door. Part of it might have to do with the way Mingyu is sitting so neatly on the couch, hands folded over his lap, like he’s preparing for an interview. Most of it probably has to do with the way Seungkwan is right beside him, sitting the exact same way. Their gazes follow Minghao as he stalks across the living room and sits in the armchair.

“What are you to up to?” he asks. “An intervention?”

“I just want to say,” Seungkwan says after clearing his throat, “that this wasn’t my idea.”

“So it is an intervention.”

“Not really,” Mingyu pipes up. His knuckles are almost blue with tension. Minghao almost wishes he had an empty coffee cup to rattle up some noise with. The air is so still in here that the dust is about to go stir crazy.

“What’s going on, then?”

“Well,” Seungkwan coughs, reaching one stiff hand over to pay Mingyu’s thigh, “he told me that you’re kind of, uh, hung up? So I—”

“I’m not,” Minghao says, “hung up on anything.”

“The hell you aren’t,” Mingyu grunts. He grabs Seungkwan’s hand when Minghao turns a glare to him.

“You guys need to keep your noses in your own business.” Minghao pushes himself out of the chair harder than he needs to, stomps his first few steps for good measure. “I’m taking care of myself just fine.”

Mingyu’s voice follows him down the hall. “We already got in touch with him,” he says, words reaching toward something Minghao has long since stopped letting anyone touch. “We told him you want to see him.” Just before Minghao’s door slams shut behind him, Mingyu’s last few words trickle through. “He said he wants to see you too.”

Minghao hits the switch for the fan and throws himself face down onto his bed. The sound is quiet, but it’s loud enough to distract him. He listens to it turn around in circles, spinning like a top forever, always the same rhythmic swish of blades cutting through the air, but it doesn’t make his blood feel any cooler. He presses his face into the duvet and listens to the sound of a poster on the wall peeling at the corner. Each second, it sounds closer to falling off the wall completely, but he never hears it tear itself away.

By the time spring came around, Jeonghan was both sitting completely still and running full sprint on an endless race course, and all Minghao ever did was watch him. Sometime around the beginning of April, a girl Jeonghan knew asked Minghao to go with her to prom, and in his shock, Minghao turned to look at Jeonghan. He was smiling, big, real. Minghao said yes before he realized what he was getting himself into.

Within the circle of Jeonghan’s friends they went with, most of them were other guys going stag. The only other couple was one of Jeonghan’s friends from math class and his girlfriend of three years, which made Minghao feel even more out of place next to a girl he hardly knew at all. They didn’t even take pictures together apart from the full-group pictures, and he sat by Jeonghan when they ate at Macaroni Grill just before heading to the dance, his so-called date somewhere at another table, having a night he would never be a part of.

At the dance itself, he was equally over- and underwhelmed. The DJ was horrible—even worse than last year, he heard, though many had thought it couldn’t be done—and the lights were too dim and too strobey and the music was too loud and his tux was too stiff. When the first slow song played, he found his date and asked her to dance, which she agreed to for roughly one aching minute, then said that she needed to use the restroom. By the time the second slow song came around, Minghao was already sitting down at one of the empty tables shoved too close to the wall, watching her walk up to one of the other boys from their group and asking him to dance.

He tapped his foot along to the subdued beat, leaned hard on one elbow, exhaled. The dance floor was swimming with halfhearted motion, heads bobbing like buoys in a distant sea, always winding up exactly where they’d been before. A minute in, the song seemed like it would never end. And it wasn’t even a good one. He started when he heard the scraping sound of a chair beside him, relaxed again when he saw Jeonghan lowering himself into the seat.

“Having fun?” Jeonghan asked, audible as a whisper, though Minghao could see that his mouth was nearly yelling.

“Yeah,” Minghao lied. When Jeonghan quirked an eyebrow, he said, “I mean, no. Not really.”

“Don’t like slow songs?”

“Not like this,” Minghao said. “It’s too loud to be romantic, even.” He blew breath up at his hair, though it was too stiff with gel to move much. “And I’d rather dance.”

Under the table, he felt a hand come to rest on his thigh, and right after, Jeonghan’s arm looped around his shoulders. When he turned to look, Jeonghan’s face was dangerously close, twinkling with the half-bent light from the strobes bouncing off the walls. “We can still dance,” he said, a real whisper, but close enough to sound like it was coming from inside Minghao’s own ear, buzzing with warmth. Then, without waiting for a cue, he began to sway.

Left and right, so slowly, almost slower than the beat of the music but somehow always just in time. The hand on Minghao’s thigh patted along in tempo, somewhere between gentle and unbearable. Minghao swayed right along with him like he had no choice, rhythm moving through Jeonghan and into his skin, though the sound wasn’t quite reaching his ears anymore. His eyes were still open, but they wouldn’t latch onto anything. The whole room was a static blur of light and dark and glinting sparkles.

They swayed all the way through the end of song, and Minghao was so absorbed in the rhythm of it, in the hand tapping on his leg, that he didn’t notice they continued right into the next one, an upbeat tune to put some life back into the dance floor. It wasn’t until it was halfway over that he realized he and Jeonghan were no longer lining up with the beats, still rippling on the same slow wave they’d been sailing all along. Minghao turned to say something, but his tongue dried up when his eyes met Jeonghan’s. Looking at him, always. For how long, Minghao wondered.

“Do you want to go somewhere else?” Jeonghan whispered. A clap of thunder splitting a quiet drizzle in half. Minghao couldn’t hear the song over the sound of his hushed voice, the sound of all the blood in his body racing against itself.

“Like where?” he asked, heartbeat pummeling staccato in the middle of his neck.

“Anywhere.” Jeonghan’s fingertips dug in tighter on his shoulder, palms burned. “We could leave.” He watched Minghao’s eyes flit toward the dance floor. His hand on Minghao’s leg was heavy. “They’ll be fine without us.”

The music was still barely audible as they climbed into Jeonghan’s car, faded to nothing behind them while they sped off down the street. Minghao’s attention split between the road ahead and Jeonghan in the seat beside him, driving forward almost without blinking. That night, the moon was huge, only a few days shy of full, and it lit up the pavement around them, racing like rivers of pearl along the sidewalks. After a while, the sidewalks disappeared, and so did the other cars, and then there was an unruly crunching sound as they turned onto a road of gravel.

With the moon unhidden by clouds, the little river looked so much more magical. It helped, too, that the coming of spring had fleshed out the shore with all sorts of small plants and flowering weeds. The surface of the water was so still that Minghao felt he could get out of the car and skate right across it. Jeonghan cut the engine, and for a long time, they sat there, staring at each other across the console in silence. Minghao took a breath, looking for words to break it with, but Jeonghan lunged across the gap and kissed him instead.

His hands moved quickly, like a man possessed, tugging off Minghao’s jacket and then his own, loosening Minghao’s tie just enough to pull his collar wider, pop open a button. Minghao had always expected his lips to be soft, but they were somehow softer, warmer, melting over him like strawberry ice cream. White light from outside illuminated the peach flush of his cheeks, and Minghao’s whole body was steeped in fever. His skin buzzed under the feel of Jeonghan’s hands.

The radio was off, but the air was full with the soft sound of their clothes rustling, of their lips finding each other and getting lost again, early crickets serenading them from outside. Minghao was sure he could see the stars through the roof of the car, dancing around each other in the navy ballroom of the sky. Jeonghan’s breath settled like dew all over him. Minghao sighed while Jeonghan kissed his neck, stared endlessly upward.

“I feel bad.” Words bubbled up from his throat without any desire to say them, but Jeonghan had already leaned back to look at him, one palm still pressed to Minghao’s chest. “I mean, about my date. She asked me to go, but I just… left.”

Jeonghan’s thumb grazed Minghao’s side as it moved beneath his shirt. “You don’t need to feel bad,” he said, gaze heavy with starlight. “She’s doing fine.”

“But I mean…” Minghao lowered his eyebrows and huffed. Twisted his fingers through Jeonghan’s hair. It had been styled so nicely, and now he was making a mess of it. “I don’t get it. Why did she even ask me?”

“Because I asked her to,” Jeonghan answered, quick, like it wasn’t worth thinking about. Minghao blinked at him.

“You asked her to?”

“Yeah.” When all Minghao did was stare, he shifted his shoulders, blinked slowly. “I wanted you to be there tonight, with me. So I asked her to take you as her date.”

Suddenly, the tip of Minghao’s tongue was electric, but nothing would roll off of it. He could tell his cheeks were burning. They held each other there while the moon watched from over the water outside. “Why didn’t you just ask me yourself?” he asked at last.

Jeonghan’s eyes flitted from Minghao’s eyes to his neck and back to his eyes, the window and his eyes, his shoulder and his eyes again. His hand didn’t move, but it squeezed tighter in its hold on Minghao’s chest, clawing after something too small to catch. “I don’t know,” he said, voice sounding like maybe he did know. “I don’t know why.” He pulled himself forward and kissed Minghao again, again, again. Ever so slightly, his lips had grown cold.

Somebody knocks on the door nice and loud, probably Mingyu. It’s loud enough that it would have woken Minghao up if he’d been sleeping. And he really should have been, except he couldn’t. Still can’t. He stares at the ceiling without moving and pretends he didn’t hear anything. It would’ve been nice, he thinks, if he had died in his sleep last night the way his chest pain was convincing him he would. Another knock comes after a few seconds, and Minghao sighs. His chest still hurts.

“I know you’re awake,” Mingyu says, rapping the door with his fingernails. He’s always so irritating. “You have to come out of your room sometime.”

“I don’t have to do shit,” Minghao groans, flopping over to smother himself with a pillow. If only he’d turned on some music so he could pretend not to hear.

“Jeonghan is here,” Mingyu tells him. The sound of his name alone is still enough to make Minghao’s pulse spike, which he hates. After he’s had this much time to get over it. “He’s waiting on you.”

“He can keep waiting.” The pillow muffles Minghao’s voice. He half-hopes Mingyu can’t hear him. “He can wait forever.”

A minute passes by without another sound, and Minghao deludes himself into thinking Mingyu has actually given up that easily. As if he ever does. As if he ever would. The moment Minghao flips onto his back and sits up straight, he hears a soft shuffling sound outside his room, then the sound of something touching the door. Not quite a knock. More like a hand coming gently to rest.

“Minghao.” A numbing chill bites him between the ribs. He almost wishes it would be Mingyu’s voice again. “Can I come in?”

“No,” Minghao gargles. The thought alone makes him want to vomit. He’s sure he can hear a smile.

“Then,” Jeonghan says, words still sparkling that miraculous way they always did, still warm against the shells of his ears, “how about we go for a drive?” When Minghao inhales, he feels sixteen again, drowning in quicksand and not lifting a finger to try and escape it. Every breath Jeonghan takes reverberates through the walls. “I’ll be waiting out here. For you.”

There’s a pressure on the side of Minghao’s chest, a hand that never left, squeezing so tight again like it’s just remembered how. He is so dizzy. He shuts his eyes and presses his hands over them, wishes that this were all just a dream, that he could wake up and be at that restaurant again. This time, he’d answer the question like he was supposed to, tell her all about the guy standing on the other side of that door. Unfortunately, he’s left himself with no choice but to open it.

The last time Minghao saw Jeonghan was the summer after Jeonghan went away to college, which meant that he was seventeen and Jeonghan was nineteen. He got his first real job, working at an ice cream shop in the mall, right after the school year ended, and before long, his summer became nothing else. Each day, he’d get up and go to work, and if he didn’t have work, he didn’t really do anything. There was a jar on his dresser full of coins that he got in tips, and he let most of his free time go by wondering what he would do with that money when the summer was over.

It was a blistering afternoon in the middle of July, and he’d spent most of it watching customers drop pennies and nickels in the tip cup with a sort of languid fervor. Most of the midday foot traffic had already passed through, and he only had an hour left of his shift, so he wasn’t hopeful about the day’s haul. When the sprinkle container needed filling, he went to go grab more from the back, and when he reemerged at the counter, there was Jeonghan.

The last time he’d seen Jeonghan was almost a year prior, right before he’d left to go off to school, and he looked different, but not in any way Minghao could latch onto. His hair was cut a way Minghao had never seen it. He set the sprinkles down when he felt his hand start to tense up around it, then planted his palms on top of the counter. Freezing cold.

Jeonghan weaved through the tables of the food court, eyes aimed high, dragging his fingertips across the backs of chairs. Minghao wondered when he should say hi, how loud, whether he should try to make a joke, but before he had the logistics figured out, Jeonghan’s wandering eyes floated to rest right on him. His face warmed into a lazy grin while he jogged up to the counter. Minghao kept his hands pressed flat against the stone.

“I didn’t know you were working here,” Jeonghan said, hooking his thumbs around the lip of the counter and leaning forward. The swirling colors of sherbet danced around in the shallows of his eyes. “I thought you hated ice cream.”

“I do,” Minghao said, “but money’s money.” Jeonghan laughed a little, glanced down toward his shoes. Minghao swallowed a cough building in his throat. “I didn’t know you were back in town.”

“Well, I’ve only been here about a week.”

“A week’s a week.”

Jeonghan tilted his chin back up, smile waning. His mouth set like he wanted to say something, but he didn’t. Just as well, Minghao figured. Communication was always a two-way street, and he was never the best at driving it. The last text he got from Jeonghan was wishing him a happy new year, and he hadn’t remembered to respond until eight days later. Still, he would’ve liked to hear something. Jeonghan sighed.

“Sorry.” As if he even meant it. Minghao pulled his hands from the counter and crossed his arms to tuck them into his elbows. They felt like they would never warm up.

“Do you want to get something?”

“Will you give it to me for free?” His grin was back with a vengeance.

“I’ll get fired,” Minghao said. Jeonghan raised his eyebrows. The insides of Minghao’s elbows were still hopelessly chilled. “I’ll charge you for a small cone, okay? That’s the best I can do.”

“Good enough,” Jeonghan chuckled. He lifted his hand to the glass of the ice cream case and traced his fingernail over it in circles. “What do you recommend? I’ll have whatever.”

“Well… The straw-ana is popular, I guess.”

“What’s that?”

“It’s like a sundae. With strawberries and—”

“Bananas?” Jeonghan said, flicking his gaze back over to Minghao. “That sounds good.”

“Two bucks.”

While Minghao made it, he felt Jeonghan’s eyes on him, tried not to let it shake his hands. They were still cold, almost too much to do anything right, but he powered through, sprinkled a ring of banana slices around the edge of the cup and swirled an extra-big pile of whipped cream on the middle. He even added a cherry on top, and the straw-ana wasn’t supposed to have one. Luck was on his side, he guessed, that his manager was already gone for the day.

“Here you go, sir,” Minghao said, reaching across the case, sundae in hand. “Enjoy.”

Jeonghan extended his arm to grab it, but instead of taking it straightaway, he squeezed his fingers into the gaps between Minghao’s. He usually had cold hands, but they were simmering then, melting his ice cream through the plastic. “What time do you get off?” he asked, low enough to be a whisper. The food court’s top 40 hits still weren’t loud enough to drown him out.

“About an hour from now.” The pressure of Jeonghan’s hand on his was explosive. Minghao was sure that the whole sundae would be crushed in his fist any second. He watched the cherry slide so painfully slowly down from its perch, frustrating in its refusal to just fall down.

“Let’s go somewhere after.”

“Where?”

“I’ll drive,” Jeonghan said, like that was an answer. He slid his other hand up to grab the cup and lifted it from Minghao’s grasp. The cherry wobbled a little closer to the edge. “Just meet me at my house.”

Minghao breathed in and out for a few cool seconds, hand still floating in the air, fingers curled around nothing. “Okay,” he said. He watched Jeonghan pluck the cherry off the top of the sundae and pop it into his mouth, lips curling.

“See you later.”

He turned around to walk off, and Minghao turned around to avoid watching him walk off. One of his hands was on fire while the other one was still struggling to find feeling, and all he hoped was that nobody else would walk up wanting ice cream. When he turned back around, Jeonghan was already long gone, but there was a ten dollar bill folded up in the tip jar.

An hour and a half later, Minghao was sitting in Jeonghan’s car. It wasn’t until he buckled up the seatbelt that he realized he could have chosen not to come, could have gone home and relaxed and let his body come back to temp. Instead, he sat baking in the passenger seat, seatbelt searing a line into the side of his neck. Every few minutes, Jeonghan would take a glance over at him, and Minghao returned each one with embarrassing speed, like a little iron splinter swiveling to face a magnet. The light on him wasn’t red enough to mask anything.

There was a lot more grass than usual when they arrived, poking in patches through the gravel that rattled under the tires. Even on the surface of the water, scalloped algae blooms clung to the banks, creeping their green hands onto the little rocks nearby. It looked so different here under sunlight, when the trees beyond the bank were visible. Without the reflection of the moon, the creek looked so lonely.

“I had a feeling,” Minghao said, “that we would come here.”

Jeonghan grinned and unbuckled his seatbelt, but made no move to open the door. “When’s the last time you came here?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” Minghao said. “Probably the last time you came here, I guess.”

“It looks a little different.”

“So do you.”

Jeonghan raised his eyebrows, and Minghao wanted to look away from him, but his eyes stayed planted. Something about the afternoon light rolling off his cheeks. “Do I?” he asked. “How?”

“I don’t know.” Minghao shrugged, seatbelt still slung across him digging at his shoulder. He had the feeling he better unbuckle it. “You just do.”

“In a good way?”

When Minghao turned to face him, Jeonghan had leaned so much closer, thin smile tugging at his lips. His hand crept to Minghao’s arm and pinched his sleeve between two fingers. Jeonghan’s eyes were patient yet expectant, glowing at Minghao in noisy silence. Instead of answering, Minghao leaned forward to give Jeonghan a kiss. The feeling was familiar in such a distant way, like the first time riding a bike in years. He deluded himself into thinking he tasted cherry on Jeonghan’s lips.

The moon that night was only a sliver, the glowing white shadow of a crescent hanging on before it disappeared into blackness. Through sparse clouds, stars twinkled around it to fill up space. Barely any of them were bright enough to join the moon in its reflection on the river. Algae blocked out large swatches of the night sky, and breezes rippled the rest of it away. Jeonghan’s hand sat hot on the back of Minghao’s neck, arm holding him just far enough to look at. His cheeks were flushed, and his lips a worn-out pink, quivering with the taste of words he wouldn’t say.

“Why didn’t you tell me you were coming home?” Minghao asked. He resisted the urge to thumb at his own lips, red as he knew they must have been. The pressure of Jeonghan’s palm eased up.

“I didn’t know when I was coming,” he said, “or how long I would be staying.” He drew his hand back and crossed his arms, leaned against his seat, stared out the window. “Things are really… They’ve changed a lot, you know?”

“You still could’ve told me,” Minghao said. “The day you got back, or the next day.” He hated the sound of his own voice, or maybe he hated the way he was talking, or maybe it was just the words.

“I guess,” Jeonghan said. He breathed out slowly, shut his eyes. “But you could’ve asked me, too. If I was coming back.” One eye cracked open. “Or anything at all.”

Minghao folded himself into his seat and buckled his seatbelt again. Not that it was protecting him from anything. “When are you leaving again?”

“I don’t know yet. In a week, maybe.”

“I see.”

“We’ll see each other again,” Jeonghan said. “Plenty of times before I go back.” He reached over and fumbled around until he found Minghao’s hand and knotted their fingers together. His hand was a little slick with sweat, felt like it might slip right out of Minghao’s. “I promise we will.”

They didn’t.

Jeonghan has a new car now. It’s the first thing Minghao thinks to comment on when he sees it. The color is way different. Even as he sees Jeonghan climbing into the driver’s seat, he can’t imagine him behind its wheel.

“You like it?” Jeonghan asks. “I got it after I graduated.” He pats the dashboard fondly. “Way nicer than the old one.”

“Yeah,” Minghao says, buckling his seatbelt. “It’s nice.” The stiffness in his chest is the same as it always was. He tucks his hands under his legs and tries to keep his fingers from going numb.

“I thought you’d think so.” The engine doesn’t make any noise when it turns on, and the radio barely ekes out anything above a murmur. Minghao is dying to reach for the volume dial, but he has the feeling he’ll be making a mistake if he tries. His hands stay planted where they are, ebbing lukewarm under his thighs.

Jeonghan has always been someone who doesn’t talk much while driving—he told Minghao when they were in high school that it helps him to focus on the road—but Minghao wishes he could’ve learned to hold up a little small talk at the wheel since they’d last seen each other. With the radio so quiet, his only listening options are the sound of the tires bumping over cracks in the asphalt or the sound of Jeonghan breathing. Both are equally loud and dizzying.

“Where are we going?” Minghao asks after another ten minutes of turning down random roads with no sign of stopping. Jeonghan shrugs.

“Not sure yet,” he says. His lips tighten into a line as he stares out the windshield, eyes glazing over with the gray of the road. “I’ll know it when I see it.”

Minghao wants to ask what that’s supposed to mean, but he hunkers into his seat instead and turns his gaze back out the window. One of his fingertips brushes against a ridge in the leather of the seat, and he runs along it again. It feels like it’s about to break. He hopes it won’t.

It’s not for another fifteen minutes that they come to a stop. Minghao shakes himself out of a daze and takes a look around. They’re in the parking lot of some church he’s never been to, parked all the way near the end of the lot, overlooking a little lake that was surely dug into the hillside by human hands. The closest car is on the other side of the lot, parked near the front door. He raises his eyebrows.

“Alright,” he says, “where are we?”

“Parking lot,” Jeonghan says like it’s obvious. It is, but Minghao was expecting more of an answer.

“Why?”

“Just felt like a good place to stop.”

Jeonghan turns and smiles, and it hurts Minghao’s ribs to look at him; no wonder he’s been avoiding it all day. Remarkably, Jeonghan looks the exact same as he ever has, down to the stray hairs curling away from his head, the slope of his shoulders, the dot of light dancing on the tip of his nose. He looks just as much like himself as always, and Minghao wishes to death he would look different. His hands are sweaty like he’s back in high school, in Jeonghan’s old car, steaming in the passenger’s seat on an August afternoon.

“So,” he coughs, “what did you want to talk about?”

“That’s my question for you,” Jeonghan says. He leans one elbow on the steering wheel, eyes hard on Minghao’s. Sunlight reflecting off the lake dyes his left side gold. “Your friends said you wanted to see me.”

Minghao exhales. “I guess they did say that.”

“And they also said,” Jeonghan says, daring just an inch closer, “that you’re trying to move on. From me.”

“I see.”

From his new angle, Jeonghan’s gaze is ten degrees hotter, and both his eyes singe Minghao like pinpricks of light through a magnifying glass. Minghao’s ears sting with the silence, but words stick to the insides of his cheeks before he can figure out how to say them. He watches one of the cars on the other end of the lot rev to life, but it doesn’t make a sound. Even Jeonghan’s breathing seems to have stopped.

“Are you?”

“I…” What he wants to say is _I don’t know_ , but it fizzes out on his tongue like candy. He wishes Jeonghan would fill in the blanks for him, but it’s fruitless to wait. And it’s so stifling in the car. He wants so desperately to look out the window, but he can’t manage to pull it off. There always was something magnetic about Jeonghan.

“What if I say,” Jeonghan begins, soft, “that there was never anything between us?” His shoulders tense, so still they seem to shake. “That there’s nothing to move on from?”

Minghao’s body seizes like he’s just been catapulted into a freezing lake, limbs collapsing in toward his chest. His heart can’t decide whether it wants to go double speed or stop completely, so it settles for a painful syncopation that makes his neck stiff. Sweat coats his palms, his forehead, lines the backs of his ears. He’s looking at Jeonghan, but he can’t make sense of what he’s seeing. There’s a sting in his eyes, and he blinks hard to scare it away, but it doesn’t get the memo.

“Then I guess,” he says through his teeth, “we’d be done talking here.”

“Is that it?” Jeonghan looks at him, waiting, like there should be something else. Minghao won’t give him the satisfaction of a tear.

“Take me home,” Minghao says. Even now, he can’t tear his eyes away. Jeonghan is floating in front of him, a mirage made of gold, and he can’t look away.

“Minghao.”

“Jeonghan.”

“Is that really what you want me to say?” Jeonghan’s hand grabs the steering wheel, fingers wrap around tight enough to snap like glass. His knuckles look like they’ll rip through the skin. “You wouldn’t even… you don’t wanna say anything back to that?”

“It’s true, isn’t it?” Minghao says. Something on his cheek is hot and falling fast. He refuses to acknowledge it. “You fooled around with me in high school, and then you left. That’s nothing. Just like you said.”

“But that’s not what I’m saying.” His voice is even in a way that Minghao is familiar with, like putty in the cracks of an old pot. “I’m asking if that’s what you want me to say.”

Minghao holds his mouth open a few seconds, tasting the air. Bitter. His voice is hoarse when it comes out. “You think that’s what I want you to say?”

“I think you think things would be easier if I said that,” Jeonghan says. He raises a hand to reach toward Minghao but stops short, grabs a fistful of nothing. “But I don’t think it’s what you want me to say.”

“Well, it’s not about what I want. It’s about what’s true. And what’s true—”

“God,” Jeonghan groans, “I wish you would just be honest.”

“Oh, do you?” Minghao’s chest pulses, and his face is drowning in heat. He could shred the seatbelt into pieces. “Well, I wish a lot of things, Jeonghan. I wish I didn’t have to see you right now. I wish I could move on, god damn it, like Mingyu and Seungkwan want me to, and go on a date for once and have a good time.” He hears his voice start to break around the edges, but there’s no time to smooth it out. “I wish you would’ve called me even one fucking time, or even texted, or said anything. But you couldn’t be bothered!”

“That’s what I’m talking about.” Jeonghan leans further forward, reaches his arm out again. Minghao can’t tell whether it’s touching him at all. “You should’ve said that to begin with.”

“Well, forgive me for not knowing what to say.” Below them, a small family of ducks walks into the pond, barely stirring up the water around them. They take off in a line, then gather into a bunch a few feet from the bank. “God, it’s been four years since I’ve even heard from you, you know? How am I supposed to remember how to talk to you?” The ducks expand again into a line, then further, until they’re drifting in all different directions, spreading out across the pond.

“Just the same as you always did,” Jeonghan says. He’s taking deep breaths but not letting out much air.

“But things aren’t the same as they were, are they?” The ducks are so far apart now, floating in opposite directions like projectiles out of competing cannons, so small and distant you’d never believe they all followed each other one by one into the lake. Minghao looks for traces of them in Jeonghan’s eyes, anywhere, but all he sees is himself. His lips move uselessly for a while before he can make them do much. “Do you have any idea,” he asks, small, a mutter against the universe, “how bad I wanted to see you?”

Jeonghan blinks. His shoulders are still. “You should’ve said so,” he whispers. “I would’ve come back.”

“You should’ve come back anyway.” Minghao presses his fingertips into his eyelids until he sees purple. “But I guess you had no reason to, huh?”

For a long time, Jeonghan doesn’t talk. Minghao doesn’t uncover his eyes to look at him. The air in this car is already suffocating him enough. “It’s not like I didn’t want to see you.”

“Well, it sure seems a lot like that.” The pressure on his eyes makes his head hurt, but it also makes him feel like he’s still sitting here, in a car, on the ground. “If you wanted to see me, you could have.” He breathes out a year’s worth of sighs. “Or not just disappeared, at least.”

“Should I have just asked you to follow me, then?” When Minghao uncovers his eyes again, Jeonghan’s are closed. He leans back against the seat, hands gripping the back of his neck. “Should I have told you I wanted you to spend two years waiting and follow right behind me wherever I went?” His fingers strain, holding onto the edge of a rain-slick cliff but refusing to budge. They look ready to break.

“I would have,” Minghao says. Jeonghan breathes out through his nose, doesn’t open his eyes.

“But what if you wouldn’t?” He taps the tip of his thumb on his neck like he’s trying to keep track of something. At last, he cracks his eyes open again, slides a sideways look at Minghao. It’s so rare for him to do this without a smile to keep it company. For the first time, Minghao thinks he’s looking at a stranger. “It’s not like I knew. And would you have thought that was fair, even? To ask you to waste the last half of high school on me?”

Minghao wants to scream. “So you thought it would be easier to just leave me behind?” Waste the last half of high school? As if that wasn’t Minghao ended up doing anyway, sitting around waiting for a call that wouldn’t come. “What about me? What was I supposed to think?”

“I don’t know,” Jeonghan groans. “Could you have done it, then?” He massages his bottom lip with his teeth a minute, red and redder. “If I had asked you,” he says, “and you said no. I don’t… I wouldn’t have…” His mouth opens and closes, eyebrows lower. Then he presses his hands over his face. “Of course I thought it would be easier. Because I couldn’t handle it.” His breath shakes through the gaps in his fingers. “And I couldn’t handle going back to see you if you didn’t want to see me.”

For a long time, Minghao sits silent. The ducks on the pond have disappeared now, together or not, somewhere past the opposite shore. “You could have at least said anything.”

“What about you? The phone works both ways.”

Minghao looks out the windshield again, out at the sky, at the rooves on the houses in the neighborhood that backs up against the lake, the fences behind them, in front of them. This car is made of glass, and Minghao is dying to smash through it. Just one good scream would do the trick, nice and loud. The air coming through the vents is too warm, and there’s not enough of it.

“Did you really want to see me today?” Jeonghan asks.

Minghao grits his teeth. “No.” There is noise in the silence after, the clattering bang of Jeonghan remaining perfectly still, not breathing.

“Then why did your friends…” His voice is thin when he talks. Minghao doesn’t want to look at him.

“Because,” he chokes, still aggressively facing forward, though he feels so much like he’s walking backward, “I went on a date. And she asked me about my first love.” He wants to gag just saying it. “And I couldn’t say anything.”

Beside him, Jeonghan shifts closer, throws off the balance of the car. It could tip on its side at any moment. “Am I your first love?”

“You’re really asking me that?” Minghao spares a glance Jeonghan’s direction. Fatal mistake. His eyes are wide, full of moonlight and crickets chirping and the dull thud of dance music. “Aren’t I yours too?”

Jeonghan inhales just a second too long before he answers. “Well,” is all he says, and it is the heaviest word he’s spoken all day. Minghao feels both like puking and like he already has.

“So it really was just me?” he whispers.

“No, not like—”

“Take me home.”

“Minghao, not like that.” Jeonghan reaches out and grabs Minghao’s wrist. His grip is tight, just like it always has been.

“Let go.”

“It’s because you’re more like,” Jeonghan says, “my one and only.”

The fingertips pressing into Minghao’s arm are alive, pulsing with enough force to break him in two. He doesn’t want to face Jeonghan head on, but he has to now, his body is telling him, or he’ll split into pieces and collapse into a pile on the floorboard. Jeonghan is looking at him like they’re in high school, out of breath and stone still, cheeks dancing warmer with each second that goes by.

“I love you,” Jeonghan says. “Then and now.”

“Don’t say that.”

“I knew you wouldn’t want me to.” His hand is unrelenting around Minghao’s wrist, palm like a glimmering pool in a quiet summer midnight. “But it’s true.”

Minghao inhales slowly, exhales even more so. He chews through his words carefully before deciding which ones to spit out. “It’s too late now.”

“It’s not.”

“It is.”

“Do you love me?”

The sun outside is shining too much. It’s refracting through the car, lighting everything on fire, bending it all out of shape. The crack in the seat’s upholstery pushes up at the underside of Minghao’s thigh, insistent, a knocking at his front door begging for an answer. What Minghao wants to say is that he doesn’t know. He’s never been good at lying.

“I loved you,” he says, “for a long time.”

“What about now?”

“I don’t know you now.”

“You do,” Jeonghan says. “You could.” He moves closer, breaths in tempo with a horse race somewhere, with the labored beating of a marathon runner’s heart. Minghao feels himself getting swept up to tag along, falling right into the rhythm. Jeonghan has always done that, and he’s hated it just as long.

“Why are you doing this?”

“You know why.” Jeonghan shifts his shoulders, tilts his head. “Because I’m awful and selfish and greedy.” He leans in, just slightly nearer. Minghao can see the stars on his eyelashes. “Because if you’re trying to move on from me, I don’t want to let you. Since for me, there’s only ever been you, you know?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, now I’m telling you.”

There’s nowhere to go now. Jeonghan is smiling, or starting to, that slanted way of his, tilted on the same axis as his head, curving with the motion of the earth. It’s a smile Minghao’s seen so many times, one that says he knows he’s winning, and Minghao hates to let him win that easily. Maybe once in a while it’s fine. Maybe they are the same two kids they used to be, running in circles in a town too small, wondering how to escape in one piece.

“Minghao,” Jeonghan says, “are you still hung up on me?”

Minghao sighs. If they were in high school, he might put up more of a fight. It would certainly be more fun. But they’ve already lost too much time. “Yeah.”

“Alright,” Jeonghan murmurs, leaning closer. “Stay hung up.” Closer still. And again. More. Forever.

For a while now, Minghao’s been thinking that he had already kissed Jeonghan for the last time without realizing it soon enough. When Jeonghan pulls him in now to press their lips together, it is that final kiss again and countless others. Jeonghan’s free hand grounds itself in Minghao’s hair, and it feels like skinny dipping and hushed footsteps through the fence. His lips are a balmy prom night by the creek, the seats of cold football bleachers dripping with rain, the taste of a cherry, stars twinkling backwards on the still waters of a creek.

Minghao presses a hand flat to the console to remind himself he’s here in the car, to hang on to the shreds of reality dancing all around him. He pulls back for a breath and soaks in the tepid air, the flush on Jeonghan’s face, the trembling in his limbs. Out of the corner of his eye, he spots movement on the lake. A pair of ducks swimming along in tandem, stuck close together in the middle of the pond.

With one more shallow breath, he grabs Jeonghan by the collar and kisses him again.

**Author's Note:**

> surprise bitch! i bet you thought you'd seen the last of me


End file.
